Winner of the best diorama was ex-forester Jeff Jones. Having been forced out of the job by injury, he has recreated his former world in minute detail over a vast scale – his three-part forestry landscape, complete with the sound of chainsaws, must be stored in a shipping container at his Bala home.

He is not the only exhibitor with a busman’s hobby. Bala’s Ynyr Jones, 31, a driver for LE Jones haulage, has assembled a huge collection of livestock trucks.

And St Asaph’s Ken Jones, a retired civil engineer with Jones Bros, has harnessed his skills to build remote-controlled vehicles: he started with a Jones Bros low loader before moving on to tanks and trucks.

A very male obsession?

Model vehicles, it has to be said, tends to be a very male obsession. There are exceptions, however. Cathrin Williams, from Llangefni, is very proud of her collection of die-cast brewery wagons.

For this she blames her partner, Arfon Owen, a lifelong collector who exhibited an impressive coach park diorama at the Bala show.

“He had his hobby before I met him,” she said. “It was a case of, if you can’t beat them, you may as well join them.”

A total of 54 exhibitors set out their models in Bala at the weekend. It could have been more: five cried off though illness. All had massive collections, and would have filled another 24 tables.